Accessories:

Any photographic equipment that isn't a lens or a camera. Tripods, lighting, digital darkroom equipment etc.

Article:

Digital:

Any camera that uses an electronic sensor rather than film to record the image.

Lenses:

Wannabe, 'serious' photographers like to call them 'glass' but there is much more to them than that one element. Interchangeable lenses have always been the key to the flexibility of SLRs and good rangefinders. It is all to easy to get sucked into a world of line, resolution charts and forget to go out and make pictures so you should embark into this subject with care.

Rangefinders:

Rangefinder cameras focus via the rangefinder windows located above the taking lens. When you look in the rangefinder you see a focusing patch in the center of your image. If you see a double image, the picture will be out of focus. When you see a single image the picture will be in focus. The Viewfinder is usually combined with the rangefinder in modern cameras but in older cameras they were separate; you looked through one window to focus and a separate window to compose.

SLR's:

Single Lens Reflex: cameras that use one lens as both the viewing and the taking lens. This is achieved by positioning a mirror in front of the shutter which reflects the image into the viewfinder. When the picture is taken, this mirror swings out of the way before the shutter opens.

TLR's:

Twin Lens Reflex cameras have two lenses with identical focal properties, one over the other. The top lens is used for composing. The bottom lens is the taking lens. When composing using most TLR's you look down through a chimney onto a focusing screen reflected from a mirror. This bounced image can be a little hard to control as moving the camera to the left, moves the image to the right. This makes composing with a TLR slower and more deliberate and considered than with other kinds of hand held cameras - this is both a good and bad quality depending upon the kind of photography you are engaged in. Most TLR's are medium format, and considering the film size, TLR's are relatively compact and often sport decent lenses resulting in great bang for your back if you have the patience.

Viewfinders:

A viewfinder camera has no interconnected mechanism between the viewing window and the taking lens that indicates correct focus. Viewfinder cameras are often cheaper cameras that employ fixed, zone, auto or scale focusing.